The way our world is traveling into the tech era, I am pretty sure that many of us “would” have heard the term OKRs or Objectives and Key results at least once in our lifetime or so many of the leading companies in our generation such as Google, Spotify, etc. have implemented OKRs in their company. After seeing their growth many non-OKR companies have tried to implement this software in their organizations.
What is the first step to getting OKRs right?
Training and Coaching. Without proper training and guidance, Implementing OKR software would not be recommended in your organization, it would be like “having rocket fuel to reach the stars without having a rocket to help us travel in the right way”
Just like Jack Welch said
Before diving into the regime of OKR training, we shall first look into the world of OKRs.
What is OKR?
A goal-setting framework called objectives and key results OKR, often known as OKRs is used by individuals, teams, and organizations to develop measurable goals and measure their progress. A goal-setting framework that helps your organization achieve its objectives and goals.
OKR is a powerful yet simple tool to master with indicators and metrics to help ensure that the company is traveling in the right direction. It not only helps you achieve your big goals but also evaluates the performance of your team and lets you know if all the employees are engaged in achieving their goals. Since the OKR software is very transparent, it helps. By letting managers know which team members are engaged, objectives and key results (OKRs) increase effectiveness and engagement. A weekly OKR goals check-in process that allows managers visibility into who is meeting their OKRs makes this information readily available. Managers may create high-performing teams that perform better at their jobs by empowering and engaging people.
Why do companies use this OKR?
High-level organizational goals are typically made by businesses at the start of the year, but after a month everyone forgets about them. This is the result of Passive Management. It becomes challenging for managers to assess and monitor the development and goal-achievement of their staff. Understanding which teams or individuals are accomplishing, overachieving, or underachieving can be challenging for executives and managers. People start to feel disjointed from the bottom up as it becomes challenging to align various teams and individuals with company-level goals and cascade goals to them. The connection between employees’ activities and the organization’s priorities is not always clear to them.
To combat this issue people started using excel, PowerPoint, google docs, etc to track the progress of each team. But this process is very time-consuming and does not rely on any level. Executives and Managers tend to avoid this method because they feel it is very time-consuming and also boring. This is not a reliable method to track each team’s objective, performance, and goal. These static methods prevent everyone from having access to or real-time visibility of the goals. To avoid such confusion, OKR comes into play where all these activities can be measured in metrics.
Some of the benefits of using OKR software are:
- Transparent in Nature.
- Helps align goals to the nature of the organization
- Gives clear direction to individuals and team
- Boost resource management and allocation.
- Analyze the root causes of why objectives are not achieved.
- Recognize individuals’ performance
- Regularly insights on goals on performance.
- Provides real-time data and metrics to keep track of where the objective is headed.
Why Training and coaching necessary while implementing OKR:
Training is an integral part of the life of an organization. Every individual whether it be top or bottom while entering an organization for the first time, Proper training must be given to the respective employee to ensure proper productivity from the employee. If the training part is ignored, the Productivity of the employee might be stagnant.
In terms of OKR software, the same logic is applicable. OKR training is undoubtedly integral to introducing the OKR methodology into your organization. However, before participating in a training program, you should ensure that you are following a proper OKR approach so that your organization understands the benefits of OKRs. The OKR training helps the entire organization in creating OKRs that are relevant, and on par with the objectives of the company and helps them focus.
Benefits of having an experienced OKR coach and being trained before implementing OKR software:
1. Cost saving and time efficiency:
Time is the most precious resource in every organization and having learned the OKR program efficiently saves time by implementing the objectives in the right way and aligning the goals to the nature of the organization. Having the entire organization learned the OKR software, all the individuals and team would feel comfortable and start to immediately align and connect with the strategic priorities. This will further save the time needed to get everyone on board while implementing OKRs. With deep knowledge and relevant experience, OKRs can introduce different perspectives of methodology to the team. This will save you time dealing with various issues in the long run.
2. Discover any blind spots when implementing OKRs:
When implementing OKRs for the first time, there might be blind spots that an untrained or inexperienced could miss for the first time. There is a very large gap between being knowledgeable in OKR and when implementing OKRs. Trained and Professional OKRs coaches can help identify and close the gap that may occur when implementing OKRs for the first time. This would help the organization to understand and not repeat any mistake that may happen the next time. Having trained coaches can reduce the cost and time of any misalignment that may occur or send the company goal in the course in the wrong direction.
3. Prioritize the right strategy from the get-go:
Having a good coach and having attained the knowledge of implementing OKR and how OKR works, the top managerial can implement and prioritize HOW and WHERE the company travels and they must give focus on the important objectives. This gives accountability to each employee for their work and they can be rewarded for the work they do. This gives a sense of professionalism to every individual that is present in the company and they will be aware of what must be done to be recognized in the company.
Conclusion:
It comes to our conclusion that OKR is a powerful goal-setting framework to develop and measure the performance of teams and employees and assess their performance for the quarter or year with indicators and metrics. It is also easy to understand what the Experienced and trained coaches bring to the tables in terms of implementing OKRs software. Being trained in the field of implementing OKRs, allows companies to bring many benefits to the companies, and being trained, allows employees and teams to access the OKRs software with ease. OKR training can help your organization in more ways than one, as it has the potential to lead you to success. As a result, your time and effort are well spent. Talk to our coaches and experts and gain their insights or try Datalligence for “free”.
